17 things you never knew about The Hunger Games 

is out in cinemas now, and for our money it\'s the best in the series yet.

Fans of Suzanne Collins\' book trilogy and the Lionsgate adaptations are about as dedicated as they come, as we discovered earlier this month at the film\'s world premiere in London.

But we\'ve set ourselves the challenge of uncovering a few tidbits that might not be widely known. Below are 17 things you probably never knew about

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 soundtrack review

fans, first seen as a gesture of solidarity in District 12 and later adopted by Katniss as a revolutionary gesture. But its significance reached new levels this year when the salute was adopted as a form of silent resistance by protestors in Thailand this year, and subsequently banned by the military.

2. Author Suzanne Collins\'s pre-Panem CV has a couple of surprising highlights: she once served as a staff writer on

, and also has a screenwriting credit on the straight-to-DVD 2012 thriller

3. Hard though it is to believe now, there was some initial backlash to the casting of Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth, with fans complaining that Katniss and Gale were implied to be biracial in Collins\' books. The criticism was so widespread that Collins herself addressed it, explaining: "They were not particularly intended to be biracial. It is a time period where hundreds of years have passed from now. There\'s been a lot of ethnic mixing, but I think I describe them as having dark hair, grey eyes, and sort of olive skin. You know, we have hair and make-up." The only characters specifically written as African-American are Rue and Thresh, she added, and their roles were cast as such.

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4. Hair and make-up ended up being crucial for all three leads – natural blondes Lawrence and Hemsworth dyed their hair dark brown, while the naturally dark Josh Hutcherson went blonde to play Peeta.

5. It\'s widely known that quite literally every young actress in Hollywood was vying for the role of Katniss. But the final shortlist reportedly came down to four names: Lawrence, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin and

mega-fan Kristen Bell was way ahead of the curve – she professed her love for the books on Twitter back in 2010, and once had a themed birthday party at which she dressed as Katniss. She also campaigned hard for the role of Johanna Mason in

, but it\'s not clear whether she was considered before Jena Malone was cast.

7. While she doesn\'t share Katniss\'s skill with a bow and arrow, Collins might not do badly in a real life Games – she\'s a trained swordfighter, learning "stage fighting, rapier and dagger, for several years" at school.

8. Any budding musicians out there who are keen to perfect the Mockingjay melody, listen up: the notes you need are G-Bb-A-D.

The Hunger Games stage show heading to London in summer 2016

movies, at the request of Collins herself and producer Nina Jacobson. "They thought the cat from the first movie was not the way he was described in the book," explains director Francis Lawrence, and they\'d be right, since the ginger Buttercup was played by a black and white cat. Fans will be aware that the new moggy plays a much more prominent role in

, so it\'s just as well Collins requested the change when she did.

10. Katniss acquires the nickname \'The Girl On Fire\' thanks to her attention-grabbing dress in the first book, but Lawrence had her own equivalent. "I didn\'t realize why my nickname was \'Plays With Fire\' until I got older," she explained. The reason, apparently, was that her parents had decided not to have any more children when Lawrence came along: "My parents played with fire, and they got burned."

books follow the same structure of three sections, divided into nine chapters each. Collins has credited this to her playwriting background, which taught her to write in a rigid three-act structure.

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12. Before Woody Harrelson was cast as Haymitch, John C Reilly and Hugh Laurie were two of the names rumored to be frontrunners. Laurie was such a fan favorite that fan site The Hob actually reached out to his publicist, who confirmed that he was unavailable – Fox medical drama

13. Katniss\'s surname is a reference to Bathsheba Everdene, the lead character in Thomas Hardy\'s

. Although there\'s not much obvious similarity between the two characters, Collins has pointed out that they both "struggle with knowing their hearts".

14. Although Collins wasn\'t picturing a multi-million dollar movie franchise when she wrote the first

novel, she did unwittingly subvert a well-worn Hollywood cliché in the opening pages by having Katniss describe her attempt to drown a kitten.

"If you think about it, there\'s a lot of other things you could have done with a kitten," Collins said of the moment. "You could have put it outside, she could have asked the neighbors if they wanted it, she could have let it run around there and get mice. But she takes it and tries to drown it in a bucket while her little sister\'s wailing, and she relents because it\'s Prim, but you\'re on page one, and you don\'t have to worry about this character feeling morally superior to you for three volumes. Right away you know, okay, she\'s not perfect."

This is the precise opposite of the "Save the Cat" trope that Blake Snyder made famous, where a writer gets the audience on a character\'s side by having them do something nice, like Ripley saving Jonesy the cat in

15. Several young actors including Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alex Pettyfer were considered for Peeta, but the only actor rumored to have turned the role down is

\'s most emotional moments – when Katniss finds out she\'s being forced back into the arena, and runs away into the forest – was also one of its most rushed in terms of filming. The scene was shot when Jennifer Lawrence was in the middle of her Oscar campaign tour for

"Because it was so cold and because in that scene she\'s not wearing a coat, I could only ask her to do it three or four times, and she had done a few takes where she had been screaming out, "No, no, no, no, no,\'" director Francis Lawrence recalled. "Then I asked her to do that silently, and that ended up being the take that we used."

17. Emotions ran high among fans with every casting announcement, but the role that proved most difficult to pin down was Finnick Odair. "I think the biggest controversy was always going to surround the Finnick choice," Francis Lawrence mused. "Everybody had their idea of what this god-like man was going to look like. You know, to some it\'s somebody the size of Chris Hemsworth in

, and to others, Sam Claflin is perfect. There was always going to be a little bit of a controversial decision there."

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